Barbara Rossi MEng MRes PhD MAS

Barbara Rossi is an Associate Professor at the University of Oxford and at KU Leuven. She is a renowned expert in sustainable engineering, bridging academia and industry to drive low-carbon innovation in the construction sector. Over the past two decades, she has made significant contributions to the field of sustainable metal structures, whole-life carbon assessment, and the resilience of materials in extreme environments. Her research has led to the publication of over 100 peer-reviewed papers, including field-defining work on the resilience of metallic structures, additive manufacturing, hot-dip galvanisation, whole-life carbon assessments, and hybrid construction systems.

Barbara is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and was awarded their prestigious Bev Waugh Medal for Productivity and Culture. In 2022, she was recognised as a Carbon Champion by the Institution, acknowledging her exceptional work leading to dramatic embodied carbon reduction in the new Gradel Quadrangles at New College in Oxford.

In Oxford, she leads the Sustainable Metal Structures Research Group, as well as the related laboratory, where her team focuses on full-scale testing, finite element analysis, AI-driven equation discovery, and lifecycle assessment. The group’s research has contributed to revisions of Eurocode 3, for steel and stainless steel structures - particularly those exposed to strength enhancement, lateral-torsional buckling, fatigue and corrosive environments. Barbara also worked closely with EGGA to develop new provisions for hot-dip galvanised structures, providing much-needed technical clarity to engineers designing for durability and sustainability.

Her work currently receives funding from EU Horizon2020 Cluster 5, UKRI-EPSRC, ICE and directly from companies (Aperam, ArcelorMittal, Whittaker Engineering, DBMVircon etc). Current DPhil students’ research topics relate to additively manufactured carbon and stainless steel structures, corrosion behaviour and resistance in harsh environments, structural optimization, structures in demanding environment, AI-driven design optimisation, and environmental impacts.

In 2024, Barbara co-founded Oxford Sustainability Ltd, where she is currently the Chief Scientific Officer. The company aims at reducing the environmental impact of the construction sector by partnering with asset owners, project managers, as well as with engineering and construction companies, to develop good practices, offering high-level strategic peer reviews and proposing carbon mitigation strategies during the earliest stages of building projects.

Her leadership embeds sustainability as a primary design driver, fostering leaner, more innovative, and nature-positive solutions.

Far beyond her academical achievements, Professor Rossi is fully committed to shaping a people-centred, future-ready construction sector. She places strong emphasis on mentorship, equity, and knowledge transfer, and aspires to foster the next generation of engineering leaders by supporting a research culture that combines excellence, purpose, and integrity.

Barbara’s influence lies not only in what she has discovered, but in how she mobilises knowledge to shape the world we build. Through her integrated approach grounded in performance and powered by innovation she is redefining what it means to design for sustainability in the 21st century.

Strategic Research Themes in the Sustainable Metal Structures Group

• Resilient and sustainable use of advanced metal alloys in critical infrastructure 
• Lifecycle-driven structural design and whole-life carbon assessment
• Hybridity and additive manufacturing for next-generation structural capabilities
• Ai-augmented design and equation discovery for performance prediction in complex structural systems
• Structures in extreme and corrosive environments
• Structural optimization under performance and sustainability constraints
• Standardisation, code evolution, and industry impact particularly for the performance of galvanised and stainless steel components under fatigue, buckling, and corrosive effects.
• Policy-informed engineering for climate-positive infrastructure aligning research with national and international sustainability agendas (e.g., pas 2080, net zero by 2050), 
• Transformative leadership and knowledge transfer in construction championing inclusive, equitable, and mission-driven innovations.

2023 Bev Waugh Medal for Productivity and Culture

2022 ICE Carbon Champion

2011 Youth Science Award

2010 ULiege Alumni Prize

2006 Rotary International District 1630 Award

2006 Foundation Margareta Van Beneden Award

2003 Innovation Prize ArcelorMittal

2003 Infosteel Student Award

Chenying Liu (Engineering Science, Oxford)

Chenying Liu completed her DPhil in Engineering Science at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Professors Zhong You and Perla Maiolino. She has worked on modern structures inspired by origami and leveraged their exceptional mechanical properties to design robots with "intelligence". Chenying is currently working at the Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology, where she applies her origami expertise to healthcare applications, including exoskeletons and energy absorptive materials. Chenying will soon join Professor Rossi's group, transitioning her focus to innovative solutions in pursuit of sustainability for "traditional" structures. Chenying is passionate about education access and science outreach. She teaches Structures and Mechanics at Christ Church and was previously Professor Rossi's Tutorial Assistant at New College. Most recently, Chenying gave the prestigious Award Lecture for Engineering, Technology, and Industry at the 2024 British Science Festival.

Burak Karabulut (Engineering Technology, KULeuven)

Burak Karabulut is a post-doctoral researcher at KU Leuven in the Faculty of Engineering Technology holding an FWO fellowship. His research is supervised by Professor Rossi and co-supervised by Professor Raf Dewil. In his current role, Burak focuses on exploring the mechanical properties, particularly fatigue behavior, of metallic components produced using Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM). Burak defended his DPhil in April 2021 on the “Fatigue behaviour of duplex welded details”. Previously, he has worked on design solutions aiming at low environmental and economic impact of employing materials such as stainless or carbon steel, aluminium structures, or even their combined use covering failure phenomena such as fatigue, instability, corrosion, earthquake, and fire.

Usman Ali (Engineering Technology, KULeuven & Engineering Science, Oxford)

Usman Ali is a DPhil candidate supervised by Professor Rossi, with a passion for innovation and sustainable solutions. His research explores stainless-steel hybrid cross-sections as part of the MSCA SeaChem project funded by the European Union. The research’s aim is to improve the durability, efficiency, and sustainability of stainless steel structures for open ocean applications. He is conducting experiments on hybrid stainless steel – carbon steel sections, tested under various loading conditions. Finite element analysis and parametric studies are informed by this analysis. Usman, and his research teammates, are developing new reliable design equations for these structural components to enable more efficient, and more sustainable structural systems, while adhering to Eurocode standards.

Nina Feber (Civil Engineering, CTU & Engineering Science, Oxford)

Nina Feber is a DPhil candidate at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, under the main supervision of Professor Jandera. She is co-supervised by Professor Rossi. Her recent research focuses on investigating the interaction between compression and bending in stainless steel welded I-section members. Both laboratory tests and advanced numerical models were employed to expand the current knowledge base, validate established design procedures, and ultimately develop a novel method for calculating load capacity across various grades of stainless steel. Through her work, Nina aims to advance the field of civil engineering and contribute to safer and more efficient structural designs.

Mohammad Hassanzadeh (Engineering Technology, KULeuven)

Mohammad Hassanzadeh is a DPhil candidate working in the field of corrosion-fatigue of duplex stainless steel, supervised by Professor Rossi, and co-supervised by Professor Dewil from KU Leuven, and Nicolas Larché from the French Corrosion Institute. Mohammad’s research is funded as part of the MSCA SeaChem project funded by the European Union. Mohammad studies crevice corrosion and fatigue of duplex stainless steels and develops new corrosion monitoring sensors.

Jimmy Jia (School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford)

Jimmy Jia is a DPhil candidate studying the metric systems of climate and finance to improve decision making of capital deployment for investing in climate-resilient infrastructure. His interest is in tracking the flow of energy and CO2 through financial transactions and seeing how they accumulate into assets and liabilities on the balance sheet. He is focused on capital intensive sectors, such as water and power, to help understand the value of assets towards achieving climate goals. Jimmy is collaborating with Professor Rossi on carbon accounting of large construction projects. Jimmy sits on the board of the Center for Sustainable Energy, a San Diego-based non-profit that administers electric vehicle and solar programs across the United States. He also is the ESG Venture Partner at PiLabs, Europe's largest and most active PropTech VC company. He previously received his BS and MS in Material Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA from the University of Oxford.

Elenor Naraidoo (Engineering Science, Oxford)

Elenor Naraidoo is a DPhil candidate, supervised by Professor Rossi. She graduated with a first-class Bachelor of Engineering degree from the University of Bath in 2022 and is a recipient of the Athena Swan Award – a charter established to advance the careers of women in STEM. Elenor is particularly interested in form optimization and the notion of ‘strength through geometry’. She is currently researching the elastic buckling behaviour of perforated metal plates, and the effect of perforations on buckling capacity. Her work is theoretical, computational, and experimental. Elenor has derived both an analytical and empirical prediction of perforated plate strength based on a parametric assessment in ABAQUS. She has discovered that perforations not only reduce material consumption but can also increase the capacity of a plate. Elenor has also conducted Digital Image Correlation experiments on simply supported perforated plates, which are used to inform empirical design methods. Elenor will extend her investigations on plates to the buckling behaviour of closed-form sections.

Maja Ranisavljevic (Civil Engineering, University of Belgrade & Engineering Science, Oxford)

Maja Ranisavljevic is a DPhil candidate at the University in Belgrade Faculty of Civil Engineering, supervised by Professor Dobrić. She is co-supervised by Professor Rossi. Maja studies the structural behaviour of I-section columns and beams with web openings. Her research employs experiments and numerical studies and assessed the accuracy and reliability of design predictive methods for cross-section deformation and resistance capacity. Her work will develop new procedures for the design of perforated stainless steel structural elements to ensure safety, and rationale use of materials for low-carbon structures.

Xiongfeng Ruan (Engineering Technology, KULeuven & Engineering Science, Oxford)

Xiongfeng Ruan is a DPhil candidate, supervised by Professor Rossi. Xiongfeng develops design and optimization methods for wire-arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) of structures. His research attempts to study the mechanical performance of wire-arc additively manufactured structures overcoming traditional inefficient trial and error methods. Considering the potential imperfection of components fabricated by additive technology such as misalignment, residual stress, or surface roughness, computational process optimization has become incredibly important. Xiongfeng is demonstrating the accuracy of his models through experiments on both milled and un-milled WAAM made of traditional carbon steel and Al-Ni-Cu components.

Caya de Leeuw van Weenen (Engineering Technology, KULeuven)

Caya de Leeuw van Weenen is a DPhil candidate working under supervision of Professor Appels (KU Leuven) and co-supervision of professor Barbara Rossi, and Nicolas Larché from the French Corrosion Institute. Her research, which is part of the MSCA SeaChem project, is centered around offshore seaweed cultivation for high value extractables. She studies the environmental fate of chemical emissions from offshore corrosion protection systems and their impact on biomass quality and yield. Located in Brest, she has access to the pristine waters of the Iroise sea, where she performs controlled exposure experiments with local seaweed populations. She is currently assessing the partitioning and bioaccumulation behavior of heavy metals in the seaweed for bioremediation and biomonitoring purposes.

Paniz Pouryaghoubi (Engineering Technology, KULeuven)

Paniz Pouryaghoubi is a DPhil candidate supervised by Professor Raf Dewil, co-supervised by Professor Lise Appels and Professor Barbara Rossi. Her research is conducted within the framework of the MSCA INCLUE project and focuses on assessing the social, economic, policy, and environmental impacts of innovative sludge treatment technologies. She is currently performing comprehensive sustainability assessments, including Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC), and Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA), for various treatment methods. To ensure model reliability, she integrates machine learning techniques with scenario and sensitivity analyses, including Monte Carlo simulations, to assess how parameter variability influences key environmental impact categories. By incorporating data provided by fellow project researchers, she assesses and compares novel treatment technologies aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Her research aims to bridge the gap between science and industry by generating actionable insights for stakeholders, policymakers, and businesses to support the transition toward sustainable practices.

Yoochan (Eugene) Kim (Engineering Science, Oxford)

Yoochan (Eugene) obtained his Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Sydney, followed by a MPhil in Mining Engineering from the Western Australian School of Mines at Curtin University. He is a seasoned Chartered Professional Engineer, recognized in Australia and internationally, with over a decade of experience in diverse sectors such as mining, oil and gas, and rail. While pursuing his MPhil, his research was centred on the use of machine learning to improve the profitability of mining operations. He has held engineering positions at notable companies including Samsung C&T, BHP, and Rio Tinto. In 2024, he became a DPhil student in the Civil and Offshore Engineering research group at the University of Oxford. His DPhil research focuses on the application of microwave heating to create various building materials, for applications on the Moon, Mars, and on Earth.

Gregory Langone (Engineering Science, Oxford) 

Gregory Langone is reading for an MSc in Engineering Science by Research at the University of Oxford, supervised by Professor Rossi. His ongoing research is on hybrid steel sections – which can include carbon steels, high strength steels, and stainless steels. Gregory is currently working to develop a design method and reliability assessment for welded hybrid I-profiles in compression. He employs both numerical and experimental methods in his analysis. This research will enable efficient design of steel sections by accurately predicting the strength of I-profiles with particularly strong flanges. Before arriving at Oxford, Gregory graduated from the United States Miliary Academy at West Point where he studied Civil Engineering and Applied Statistics. Gregory is a recipient of the John and Daria Barry Scholarship which generously supports his study.

All prospective students are welcome to contact me by email before sending in their application. I am happy to have an informal chat with you to discuss your research proposal or to tell you more about what we do at the Sustainable Metal Structures Research Group.

Information on the latest deadline for applications to DPhil in Engineering Science can be found on this page.

Useful links